Comment by bsimpson
9 days ago
Wild to see such fragmentation in such a niche space. It's an aftermarket Linux flash for smartwatches, and there are companion apps for SailfishOS and Ubuntu Touch, which are extremely niche flavors of the already very niche mobile Linux.
> niche space
Think of the space as less "I want Linux on my wrist", and more "I want a [cheap || not 1st world expensive] smartwatch as a gift."
These folks do gods work of making them supported and a real shared platform (c.f. their self-post "The only real signal we get is occasional [chat visitor] going "hey, it booted on my watch from 2014 and now it's usable again"")
Not being much of a watch person let alone a smartwatch aficionado, I had no idea there were even that many smart watches. The long list looks impressive. I wonder if there are a lot of the same guts so it's not as bad of a nightmare to maintain as it looks. Either way, the list of supported devices is impressive.
Indeed quite some watches share the same platform as can be seen in this list: https://wiki.asteroidos.org/index.php/Technical_Details_of_A... But the manufacturers all cook their own soups and its surprising how much adaption is still necessary per device.
This is a feature, not a bug. Like the many Linux distros we have or the many UI/WM you can use on desktop Linux.
I am running HarmonyOS on my watch (moved from Apple Watch to Huawei GT-6 41mm) now. Turns out it doesn't matter as third party apps on watches generally suck anyway (low functionality, mostly just companions to iOS/Android app, bad/not many options for UI).